The Red Prince: The Life of John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster

by Helen Carr

Hardcover, 2021

Status

Available

Call number

942.038092

Genres

Collections

Physical Books, EvaStreet

Publication

Oneworld Publications (2021), 304 pages

Description

A TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2021 'The Red Prince announces Helen Carr as one of the most exciting new voices in narrative history.' Dan Jones Son of Edward III, brother to the Black Prince, father to Henry IV and the sire of all the Tudors. Always close to the English throne, John of Gaunt left a complex legacy. Too rich, too powerful, too haughty... did he have his eye on his nephew's throne? Why was he such a focus of hate in the Peasants' Revolt? In examining the life of a pivotal medieval figure, Helen Carr paints a revealing portrait of a man who held the levers of power on the English and European stage, passionately upheld chivalric values, pressed for the Bible to be translated into English, patronised the arts, ran huge risks to pursue the woman he loved... and, according to Shakespeare, gave the most beautiful of all speeches on England.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member john257hopper

This is a well-researched and well written biography of one of the most prominent of Medieval characters who did not actually become king. He was the third son of King Edward III, and grew up against the background of the early stages of the Anglo-French conflict known to later generations as the

Hundred Years War, learning from the military exploits of his father and his elder brother Edward, the Black Prince. In many ways he was a conventional nobleman of his times, a military figure and a mainstay of the thrones of his father and later of his nephew King Richard II against the growing power of the nascent Parliament and of the common people, as shown in the so-called Peasants' Revolt. At the same time, he is possibly best known to many readers now for his famous love affair with Katherine Swynford, mother of his illegitimate children, who were later legitimised after they got married in the last decade of his life, after the death of his second wife Constance of Castile. This of course paved the way in the following century for the conflict known as the War of the Roses. At his death he was witnessing his Lancastrian inheritance from his first wife Blanche being severely challenged by the increasingly tyrannical King Richard II. This is a well rounded account of the subject's life, though of course much is unknown about his life especially in his earlier years, and a lot of this period is about the events of the time, and mentioning that John was or may have been involved. Definitely worth a read for anyone interested in Medieval history.

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